This book is about the fundamental injustice of racism and the dangers it represents for Irish society. It is the first collection of writings by activists and academics to take seriously international commitments to combat racism, expressed in the World Conference against Racism held in Durban, South Africa.
Despite the plethora of newspaper articles and radio and television programmes on new manifestations of racism in Irish society, there is no authoritative text that students and other interested parties can refer to in the Irish context. This book of fifteen chapters fills this theoretical and pedagogical gap.
The book situates racisms in Ireland, and makes sense of how and why Irish society has become racialised. More simply, it asks how is it possible that racism has become normalised in Ireland. In the process of normalising radicalisation, shocking things have been said in recent years about racialised minority groups, culminating in the killing of a Chinese student, Zhao Liu Tao, in Dublin in January 2002. These physical and verbal attacks have not usually come from organised fascist or racist movements like in other European countries, but have emerged from ‘ordinary’ members of the public, as well as journalists, politicians and writers. Moreover, there has been no shortage of people eager to defend the right to say such things.
Table of Contents
Situated racisms: a theoretical introduction. Robbie McVeigh and Ronit Lentin
Travellers in Ireland: an examination of discrimination and racism. John O’Connell
Identity and racism in Northern Ireland. Deepa Mann-Kler
One refugee experience. Drazen Nozinic
Racism and the media in Ireland: setting the anti-immigration agenda. Patrick Guerin
The new Irish storytelling: media, representations and racialised identities. Elisa Joy White
Generating awareness for the experiences of women of colour in Ireland. Shalini Sinha
The web of self-identity: racism, sexism and disablism. Rosaleen McDonagh
Nick, Nack, Paddywhack: anti-Irish racism and the racialisation of Irishness. Robbie McVeigh
‘Who ever heard of an Irish Jew’? The intersection of ‘Irishness’ and ‘Jewishness’. Ronit Lentin
Christianity, conversion and the tricky business of names: images of Jews and Blacks in nationalist Irish Catholic discourse. Katrina Goldstone
Othering the Irish (Travellers). Sinéad Nà Shúinéar
Questioning Irish anti-racism. Marian Tannam
Is there an Irish anti-racism? Building an anti-racist Ireland. Robbie McVeigh
Anti-racist responses to the racialisation of Irishness: disavowed multiculturalism and its discontents. Ronit Lentin